Actor Brian Blessed is offering to record voicemail messages for the first hundred O2 UK customers who buy an HTC Windows Phone 8 handset this week.

The promotional campaign, which involves each purchaser tweeting @O2 using the hashtag #brianmail, will reward winners with a voicemail greeting recorded by the richly-voiced British actor

Orange Vallée, the part of France Telecom-Orange responsible for innovation and development, has released a free cross-network mobile app that enables users to make free voice calls, send messages and receive voicemail messages.

It’s called Libon and is available as an iOS app in 90 countries including the UK; an Android version is planned for early next year.

Mark Bridge writes:

Much like the mainstream media, this week's news summary begins with 'voicemail hacking'. In our podcast feature on Friday we spoke to industry crime-fighter Jack Wraith about the security of voice messages. He explained how remote voicemail access was now much more secure than it was ten years ago, which is good news for everyone (except dodgy investigators).

Mark Bridge writes:

In this week's podcast feature we're joined by Jack Wraith, chief executive for the Telecommunications UK Fraud Forum and chairman of the Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum.

He talks to Iain Graham about the current state of voicemail security and the improvements to mobile security we've seen in the last few years.

As 'voicemail hacking' news stories continue, Iain Graham talks to mobile industry crime-fighter Jack Wraith. Jack discusses mobile phone security from his position as head of the Telecommunications UK Fraud Forum and the Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum.

Mark Bridge writes:

“Torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool, loving both of you is breaking all the rules”.

Mary McGregor sang those words in 1976 – and Apple would do well to bear them in mind today. Why?  Well, Rick Astley is to blame for it all.

Oh, alright, Rick’s not personally involved. It’s worm-writer ikee, along with the people who’ve followed him in creating security threats for the Apple iPhone. But why am I invoking the lyrics of Mary McGregor?  It’s because Apple has two loves... and it may be struggling to choose between them.

Mark Bridge writes:

Samsung. Huawei. Acer. HTC. Motorola. LG. Toshiba. Sony Ericsson. INQ. Dell. They’re all after a slice of the Android cake. (The Android cake is an éclair at the moment. Not particularly good for slicing. But I digress).

And my, what advertisements we’ve seen. Most recently Motorola has been knocking the iPhone while HTC has been playing with marker pens.

But those ad campaigns are mainly about manufacturers and phones. As you’d expect, really. Not about Android.

James Rosewell writes:

One paisa is equivalent to 1/100 of an Indian rupee. In American dollars, a paisa is worth 0.00022 cents. For the British reading this, that’s 0.00013 pence.

Why is this important?

A company in India called MTS have launched a pay as you go SIM card that allows you to make on-network calls for ½ paisa per second...

Mark Bridge writes:

Cain and Abel. Price and Andre. Judge Dredd and Rico. History is full of pairings that didn’t work out. Two forces that started off together but ended up trying to destroy each other. And so it could be with mobile phone operating systems.

This week it’s been reported that Nokia will be dropping Symbian from its N-series devices by 2012, favouring Maemo instead.

Mark Bridge writes:

This week there’s a government exercise taking place in London. A number of civil servants and private sector employees are simulating the failure of the UK’s fixed-line telephone network. Called “White Noise”, it imagines a scenario where telephone exchanges are destroyed by a giant subterranean monster that pulls really hard on all those underground cables.

Iain Graham, James Rosewell and Mark Bridge return to review their mobile industry predictions from last year. Which mergers, partnerships and developments did they forecast correctly... and which didn’t work out as planned?

Later in the programme, the team anticipates some of the topics that will be hitting the headlines during 2016.

Mark Bridge learns about the mobile technology trends at Mobile World Congress 2015 by chatting to James Rosewell of 51Degrees, Dr Kevin Curran from the IEEE and Chris Millington of Doro.

They talk about wearable devices, wireless charging, mobile operating systems and much more... including some of their favourite products from the exhibition.

We're taking a look back at the biggest mobile industry news stories from February 2015, including allegations that the UK's security service tried to breach SIM card security by hacking into one of the world's biggest SIM producers.

We also talk about the planned BT and EE merger, the creation of two new UK virtual networks, some acquisitions in the mobile payment arena and a new Ubuntu smartphone.

In today's programme Mark Bridge talks to Chris Millington, who's Managing Director for Doro UK and Ireland.

They discuss the state of mobile retailing in the UK, the future of wearable devices and - as you might expect - smartphones for seniors.

We're back with a month of mobile industry news, including takeover talks and takeover rumours. O2 and Three are said to be discussing a merger... but is there any truth in the suggestions that BlackBerry could be up for grabs?

We also discuss Apple's record-breaking quarterly figures, the highlights of CES and the launch of Microsoft Windows 10, as well as saying farewell to the current version of Google Glass.